Creating mobile live streams with Meerkat for Android couldn't be simpler, but it lacks features and polish.

The story of Meerkat seems like a familiar one. The app, which lets users quickly and easily create live video streams from their Android and iOS devices, gained enormous buzz when it was first launched. People loved it, people hated it, people loved to hate it. SXSW is involved. It was, for a brilliant moment, a big deal.

But now, after a very public falling out with Twitter, and the aforementioned company's launch of its own live streaming app, Periscope, Meerkat's luster has worn off. While it still works well, and is quite intuitive, it cannot compete with Periscope, which is more polished and offers critical features Meerkat simply lacks.

When Meerkat first launched, it was iPhone-only. As was Periscope. Thankfully, Meerkat recently released its Android version. To start streaming with Meerkat, just download the app from Google Play, and log in using your Twitter account. Meerkat then prompts you to confirm your phone number via a text message, but I was surprised to find that this step was merely optional after a few failed attempts.

What You SeeYou may be momentarily blinded by Meerkat's liberal use of violent yellow. But while the app's designers won't win any awards for subtlety, they deserve credit for producing a profoundly simple application.

Dead center on the main page is a prompt to start streaming, or schedule a stream. The latter option lets you pick a time for your stream, tweets out a link to your soon-to-be-stream, and even reminds you when it's time to start. It's a great tool for media personalities (both big and small) to organize fans, and one sorely missing from Periscope. The former simply starts your stream immediately, and tweets a live link.

Below the main menu are curated popular streams that are live right now. Tap on one, and you'll be dropped in, mid-stream. Though I appreciate Meerkat's simple design, Periscope does a much better job connecting you with content by elevating live streams and saved, completed live streams from your friends.

When hosting a live stream in Meerkat, you see icons representing your viewers across the top of the app's screen, with messages sent to you by Meerkat viewers displayed along the side. Along the bottom are buttons to toggle your front- and rear-facing cameras, stop the stream, and turn on the front-facing flash. I was disappointed when, during my testing, the flash on my Samsung Galaxy S5 simply refused to turn on when I tapped the button. As is the case with many Android apps, your mileage may vary.

When you end your live stream, Meerkat gives you the option to save your stream to the camera roll. That's a nice feature, since Meerkat doesn't save any of your footage to the cloud for replay the way Periscope does; once the stream ends, it's gone forever. A stream of any significant length will take up an equally significant amount of space on your phone, so save with caution.

In previous testing, I noticed that Meerkat had a hard time with streams hosted over cellular connections. That's not surprising: Streaming video is bandwidth intensive, after all. But while the stream looked fine on my end, I discovered that no one was able to join, likely because of my poor data connection. In this round of testing, I connected to the Wi-Fi network of a California-bound jet, and was surprised that I was able to start a stream. Back on the ground, I had no trouble creating Meerkat video streams while connected to Wi-Fi.

Followers and Finding StreamsMeerkat boasts that its streams can be viewed on any device, and that's more or less true. Anyone can click on the link Meerkat generates and view your stream in a browser—once they sign in with Twitter, that is. Lurkers who lack Twitter accounts aren't able to get in on the action. Anyone, Twitter user or not, can watch a Periscope stream in their browser.

Viewers on desktop computers can't interact with the stream: no messaging, no favoriting, and no following. It's the same with Periscope. In tests, video quality in my browser was adequate, and I'm happy to see that Meerkat has ditched its weird fill-screen zoom and now presents exactly what the host sees on their phone.

Your Meerkat followers get a push notification when your stream goes live and can watch from within the Meerkat app. This is the best way to enjoy Meerkat streams, since app viewers can send messages to the host and see who else is watching. That said, it's a bit of a cluttered experience. There are also buttons for viewers to favorite and retweet streams.

I've mentioned Meerkat followers a few times already, and you might be wondering where these followers come from. The answer is Twitter. Thankfully, Meerkat no longer automatically has you follow your Twitter friends when you create an account. You can add new followers using a search box, but the experience is quite lacking. You simply search for the name of a Twitter user, but if you make a mistake then you'll only receive a cryptic error message. I'd rather have a predictive list to help me find the person I'm looking for.

This brings up one of the really strange aspects of Meerkat. Even though the app is tightly connected to Twitter, it's best enjoyed in its own app and not in your browser. Tapping a Meerkat link in the Android Twitter app launches a browser window with the option to open the app, but that didn't work for me. Since I first reviewed Meerkat, the developers have added a Live Now section to the main page, making it easier to locate streams, but finding the streams from my friends within the app is still a tricky proposition.

Periscope or Meerkat?When it first released on iPhone, Meerkat was extremely impressive because of how well it wrangled that notoriously finicky beast, the live stream. Unfortunately, Meerkat was never able to capitalize on its initial hype. While there have been minor improvements between its launch and coming to Android, Meerkat still looks and feels very much the same as it did.

That's normally not a problem for a mobile app, but Twitter's Periscope does everything that Meerkat does, and looks better doing it, too. While Meerkat has a homespun simplicity, Periscope has the slickness I expect in a mobile app.

But Periscope isn't just a pretty face. It's tight integration with Twitter works to its advantage, and its ability to save streams—both locally and to the cloud for replay—give it a distinct advantage over Meerkat, which is limited to the moment. When placed head to head, I say Periscope is the live streaming app to use. Keep it if a particular celebrity piques your interest and exclusively uses Meerkat. I'll be keeping an eye on Meerkat, but the wind seems to have shifted against it for now.

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About the Author

Max Eddy is a Software Analyst, taking a critical eye to Android apps and security services. He's also PCMag's foremost authority on weather stations and digital scrapbooking software. When not polishing his tinfoil hat or plumbing the depths of the Dark Web, he can be found working to discern the 100 Best Android Apps.
Prior to PCMag, Max wrote... See Full Bio

Meerkat (for Android)

Meerkat (for Android)

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